- 11 -
Fees Proposals
Turning now to government fees.
Public Cargo Working Areas (PCWA) fees
First, our proposal to increase public cargo working area fees. I did propose some modest adjustments to this Council in October last year. Our aim was to do no e more than to recover costs for what are essentially commercial operations and very large one at that. The intention of those proposals was, through a phased programme, to remove the public subsidisation of the current service and get a reasonable rate of ... return on the average net fixed assets valued at historical prices. Our first phase proposal was for an average increase of 20 per cent with a rate of return of only eight per cent. This has to be seen in the context of continued growth in the number of ships using the port and the continued growth in demand for cargo-handling facilities. Pricing such fees below cost and market demand makes no commercial sense or economic sense.
Merchant Shipping (Seafarers) fees
Secondly, I have tabled proposals for adjustment to seafarers fees. In setting these fee, we have adopted an approach where by most of the fees are revised by about only 10 per cent to bring them in line with current price levels. The proposed fees still.. only recover 22 per cent of the total cost incurred in providing such services.
Airport Car Parking Charges
I would like to make one more illustration as to why it makes no sense to put a general fees on charges. I intended in the near future to put the Members the proposals to airport car parking fees. These fees are not the major item but any freeze on them, as is urged by this motion, would produce some unintended and totally undesirable consequences. The principle in setting the fees for the airport car park is not to raise revenue, but to ensure that there are always spaces available at the airport for airport users. The fees have to maintain a relativity with car-parking fees in the neighbouring areas, otherwise there would be an influx of casual car drivers into that car park that all available spaces would be quickly filled and those who genuinely need to drive the car to the airport would have to drive around the airport time and again waiting for a space to become available.
#
1